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Feral
These poems are luminous despatches from the charged, porous boundary between ‘animal’ and ‘human’. They pull apart and remake definitions and categorisations of wildness and civilisation, training their focus on the language we use to describe youth, social class, and the body. From iron horses to grizzly bears, from deep-water fish to scanderoons, Feral roams the limits of power, language, and love. Cinematic, playful, edgy, tender, startlingly imaginative and strange, Feral’s voices carve out a space in the borderlands.
Kate Potts' Whichever Music was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice in 2008 and shortlisted for a Michael Marks Award. Her first book-length collection, Pure Hustle, was published by Bloodaxe in 2011. Feral is her second collection.
Kate Potts' Whichever Music was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice in 2008 and shortlisted for a Michael Marks Award. Her first book-length collection, Pure Hustle, was published by Bloodaxe in 2011. Feral is her second collection.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
Published September 27, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 27, 2021
Read: Dec 2021
I had wanted to read this book of poetry for a very long time, based on the front cover, which is gorgeous, and the Goodreads description: These poems are luminous despatches from the charged, porous boundary between ‘animal’ and ‘human’.
Based on this description I thought I was going to get a set of poems that would make me think about humanity and the blurred lines between what it means to be human and animal. However, when I actually sat down to read the poems, I found that they were...ok. Only two poems in the collection really lived up to my expectations and they were Animal Song (I) and Piston and Bones. The others could be split into two categories; 1) good poems that seemed to have nothing to do with the theme and 2) poems that made no sense (and perhaps that's my fault for not reading enough poetry to 'get it'!)
3/5 stars
I had wanted to read this book of poetry for a very long time, based on the front cover, which is gorgeous, and the Goodreads description: These poems are luminous despatches from the charged, porous boundary between ‘animal’ and ‘human’.
Based on this description I thought I was going to get a set of poems that would make me think about humanity and the blurred lines between what it means to be human and animal. However, when I actually sat down to read the poems, I found that they were...ok. Only two poems in the collection really lived up to my expectations and they were Animal Song (I) and Piston and Bones. The others could be split into two categories; 1) good poems that seemed to have nothing to do with the theme and 2) poems that made no sense (and perhaps that's my fault for not reading enough poetry to 'get it'!)
3/5 stars
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June 23, 2020I expected to love a poetry book titled Feral, especially when the second poem, “Animal Song,” delivered what I was expecting to find – poems depicting humans as part of the animal kingdom, a fierce and sometimes comical, self-obsessed part. This was my favorite line from “Animal Song.”
“They measured, on average, 1.65 metres
tall. They walked steady on their
hind legs, like startled bears….”
I just didn’t click with most of the poems, but enjoyed two others. “Suckling Pig” begins with definitions of one, including “anthro/porcine” examples found at the tube station and ends
“It’s plain as a pig on a sofa just where we’re headed –
O Woozle hunter, O righteous.”
My favorite was a poem about her grandfather, who suffered with fierce depression that was not improved by shock therapy.
“On a bad day, my mother said, her father would calmly announce after dinner
that he was going to stand in the road and wait for something to run him over.
On a bad day, she said, he would bolt out of the house and away,
taking his clothes off as he went and leaving little fabric puddles in his wake.
His children would run out, scooping up those familiar garments, and forging on after him...."
“They measured, on average, 1.65 metres
tall. They walked steady on their
hind legs, like startled bears….”
I just didn’t click with most of the poems, but enjoyed two others. “Suckling Pig” begins with definitions of one, including “anthro/porcine” examples found at the tube station and ends
“It’s plain as a pig on a sofa just where we’re headed –
O Woozle hunter, O righteous.”
My favorite was a poem about her grandfather, who suffered with fierce depression that was not improved by shock therapy.
“On a bad day, my mother said, her father would calmly announce after dinner
that he was going to stand in the road and wait for something to run him over.
On a bad day, she said, he would bolt out of the house and away,
taking his clothes off as he went and leaving little fabric puddles in his wake.
His children would run out, scooping up those familiar garments, and forging on after him...."
February 18, 2020
I didn't connect with this.
May 9, 2019
'tetching'
'downy with cold cream and cigarettes'
'the boozy wallop of milk'
ghazal form
"The rarer they get, the fewer meanings animals can have. Eventually rarity is all they are made of." Helen MacDonald
There are many turns of phrase I wish I had written (the radio play in the middle passed me by)
nouns = verbing
Negotiating the space of the world through the space of the poem. "my footsteps' shuffle hi-hats on the frosted kerbs."
A dictionary as structure from 'A General Dictionary of Magic' - mash up of biological and technical mechanisms
Footnotes are in! 'Footnotes to a Long-Distance Telephone Call'
Animals of the mind canter through the pages. Metaphors and similes do not stand alone -t hey are compressed into sentences.
'downy with cold cream and cigarettes'
'the boozy wallop of milk'
ghazal form
"The rarer they get, the fewer meanings animals can have. Eventually rarity is all they are made of." Helen MacDonald
There are many turns of phrase I wish I had written (the radio play in the middle passed me by)
nouns = verbing
Negotiating the space of the world through the space of the poem. "my footsteps' shuffle hi-hats on the frosted kerbs."
A dictionary as structure from 'A General Dictionary of Magic' - mash up of biological and technical mechanisms
Footnotes are in! 'Footnotes to a Long-Distance Telephone Call'
Animals of the mind canter through the pages. Metaphors and similes do not stand alone -t hey are compressed into sentences.
August 27, 2022
Enjoyed Pott’s style but the collection lacks cohesion.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews